Good Horror Literature/Movies

[5hift]

What do you guys like in a good horror story/movie?

 

I've never actually been too much of a fan of the genre in the past but up until recently I just can't seem to get my fill. Its not so much the actual genre I'm so interested in but the question of what makes a good horror story/movie.

 

Based on what I've analyzed, its a lot more simpler to create an effective horror story than it is to create a romantic one. Mostly because a good horror story shouldn't have to put too much effort in building itself. Rather, the reader's imagination should be handling that aspect.

 

The beauty of this is that the reader pretty much does this without even knowing they're doing it. Its kind of like a dream that you're witnessing instead of experiencing for yourself. I came to this consensus based on reading/listening to a metric crap-ton of SCP documents. I won't go too in-depth on what these are since you can literally go see for yourself but they are a textbook example of how to pull off this spontaneous, subconscious world-building. These documents are intentionally vague whether by literally censoring certain parts of the document or just the fact that these documents read as being based off of indirect observation as to provoke a sense of confidentiality like you're not supposed to be reading this. As a result, you begin to put things together in your mind and the result is truly horrifying.

 

On the subject of vagueness, I observed another interesting feature of good horror development. This time its from ya boi Junji Ito, a horror manga artist. Ito's style of horror pretty much takes half the effort of reading a SCP file by providing visuals and more fleshed out (hehe) characters and settings. The ironic thing about this is that Ito rarely ever puts any effort in actually developing characters. While pretty much all his stories feature "main" characters, they are never really elaborated on. This may just seem like bad writing, but its actually completely intentional. You see, the focus of these stories are never on the characters themselves. They are just a means of eliciting the actual horror from the story. They're like paintbrushes and the fucked up spectacle of horror is the canvas. This way, the reader will never develop any real attachment which would take away from the spectacle. You are merely here to see some people get absolutely fucked up.

 

A final thing I'd like to speak on is rationalization or rather the human need to make sense of what we see. When I was younger, I watched Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood and remember just shitting myself as I watched Jason Voorhees go to town on a bunch of helpless teens. Well... at least until the end. You see, in Part 7, one of the main characters is a girl who possesses telekinetic powers. She and Jason face off and long story short, she wrecks Jason. At that point, I was completely over this movie. By introducing some overpowered character that can face off against this brutal psychopath, the movie rationalized my fear of Jason. Up until then the movie seemed like a pretty wholesome (lol I'll stop) horror movie but the fight felt completely out of place. Its almost like the writers suddenly decided they wanted the movie to be a superhero movie which is total bullshit. Now going back to Junji Ito, he likes to end his stories (well, at least his best ones) on pretty precarious spots. He pretty much just goes "Lol, the end I guess" and leaves it at that. But that's the thing, he doesn't neuter the horror effect by wrapping up the story. He leaves you with pretty much nothing except a shrug and the dreaded feeling of not knowing what happens after. His job as the creator of the story isn't to make sense of what he's writing, he's just giving you a scenario and showing what happens when shit hits the fan in that scenario.

 

That's about all I have time to write on so again, I'd like to know what you guys think makes a good horror story.